Elsie, Ron and Abimaro
At the top of Bastable Avenue, the road that marks the entrance into Thames View Estate is Thames Lodge Sheltering Home. Robert Taylor from London and Quadrant was keen for us to work with its elderly residents so we went in today for our first session.
The first person to sit down with us was Elsie. She began to tell us her memories of the area - of a time when the whole place was still covered in fields and of her job as an office clerk and ongoing struggle with diabetes. Then she produced this poem from her bag:
Abimaro, Vanessa and I struggled to hold back the tears when she read out "my hair has lost its shine of youth, my voice would love to sing." With Elsie's guidance we set about putting her words to music - a cappella, using only walking sticks as percussion. Ron, a Korean War Veteran and ex-snake handler amongst other things, joined in and together we created Elsie's Song.
Tony and Abimaro tuning up
After a while Tony joined us. He had a blue electric guitar with him which he immediately offered to us - although we didn't take it away, it'll be great to borrow for our forthcoming pop up outdoor gigs on Farr Avenue. As he was tuning up Tony said he had six more guitars upstairs in his wardrobe - a real closet guitarist, but not for much longer if he keeps playing like this:
